


If Anatole is a sinner, then I am no better

by ko_drabbles



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Cosplay, Crossdressing, Crushes, Kyoya-Bowl, M/M, One Shot, Reflection, Secret Crush, Self-Reflection, The Great Comet of 1812, let's make that a tag!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 10:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20006605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ko_drabbles/pseuds/ko_drabbles
Summary: Mori observes the fitting from a distance, admiring the pale, bare skin of Kyoya's arms and shoulders, and thinks of Tolstoy, Natasha and Anatole.





	If Anatole is a sinner, then I am no better

**Author's Note:**

> I've been listening to too much Great Comet lately...

All he can do is stare, and he realises how he's fallen in that very moment.

With the great success of the Great Comet, the host club were almost obligated to pay it homage in at least one afternoon, donning the luxurious aesthetics of imperial Russia and - of course - dressing appropriately. There was much debate over the subject of casting, but as he stares at Kyoya as the young man twirled his many skirts and crinoline, voluminous and the black a perfect contrast against the pale, exposed flesh of his bare arms and shoulders, he realised their now obvious mistake.

He's in a military uniform, surveying the scene from a distance, but he's no Andre. He's not the fiancé separated from his love by war, he's not the prince they wish to whisk them away.

He's not a hero, he's Anatole. He's a man who lusts over those he can't have, seducing the naïve Natasha into a thoroughly preposterous elopement, wishes to kiss and make love to her despite its lack of morality and even legality.

He thinks about how beautifully Kyoya sings, the opera fiasco when Natasha both wants and fears Anatole seizing her and kissing her neck. Intimate, far too familiar. Anatole is a character that long fell out of favour, and for a reason; too passion and impulse driven, too hedonistic, too careless. One who was a dream all that time ago, in such a repressed era, but now was only seen as something to despise.

It makes sense, but as he watches Kyoya fluttering his eyelashes at their Anatole - an infatuated Kaoru - he feels... sympathetic, almost. Wanting something you're unable to have is not just the fault of sinners, unless his character had degraded further than he thought.

Because he loves like any other man, and who couldn't love such a beauty as the raven-haired boy?

Tamaki takes Kyoya's hand and places a soft, courtly kiss on the back of his hand. Pierre, assigned as such by Renge, who said that the studious loner who wished himself better was closer to Tamaki's real self than anyone would like to admit. He concedes to that, but the blond did actually take strides to better himself whereas Pierre seemed to stay stagnating in it for most of the play.

There are carefree laughs and jokes, like usual. He can see the spark in Kyoya's eyes, glasses cast off and no longer placing that barrier between himself and the world, and then he's walking over to him, and Mori doesn't even know what he's doing. He lets himself move on instinct, like the man he should be playing.

"You look... bewitching..." He admits, and it seems Kyoya flushes much more easily when without his glasses, his pallor making the blood rushing to his cheeks even more obvious. He makes a beautiful young lady, especially with how he naturally and demurely shifts his gaze to the floor.

"Oh Andre," Kyoya breathed, looking up with a twitch at the edge of his painted lip, "I want you now, at once."

This time, he blushed scarlet, Kaoru turning to face them both as Kyoya took his hands and pulled him into a dance. With his hands on the boy's tiny waist, only emphasised by the corset beneath, he couldn't help but think of other sins as they spun around the room, sharp gazes directed at the man who was whisking away such a beauty.

He could do as Anatole did, confess his love and force a kiss on those perfect lips, but he wouldn't. He couldn't. That wasn't the sort of man he was, after all. He was steady, and slow, and the one who couldn't have the fair Natasha. He wished he was more like Andre, in that moment...

It would probably be better if he weren't here.


End file.
